Page 168 of Back in the Saddle

“Yeah, Homer. You remember my friends Harlow, Luna and Raye.”

He looked between them while nodding.

“We wanted to walk around and ask a few questions about what’s going on,” I told him.

“Why? Your guy is here,” he stated.

So he figured out Tex was ours, because I wasn’t sure Tex would tell him.

“You’re not telling everyone he’s our guy, are you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. He came to me. Requested space. Shared what he was doing and asked if I was okay with it. When I said yes, he told me we had to keep it to ourselves. But I’m glad he’s here.”

Well, either Tex or Mace or someone knew how to navigate this, because that was how to navigate it.

“Tex hasn’t been around the camp for very long,” I remarked. “But I think some of the folks trust me, so I thought maybe I could ask.”

“No one knows anything, Jessie,” Homer said. “Only time the cops have come not to rustle us around was when they came asking about this. We’re worried. If we knew something, we would say.”

“I’d like to ask anyway. Is that okay?”

He nodded.

“Will you escort us?”

He nodded again.

I slid a glance through the chicks, and we headed into the camp.

A frustrating, slow-going hour later, we found Homer was right.

No one knew anything. Or at least not the ones who would talk to us, which was about half of the camp. Homer took over questioning about a quarter of the rest. The last contingent didn’t talk to anybody, not even Homer, so we didn’t approach them.

Though, one woman, her name was Connie, made a remark about the Fentanyl dealer and the worse-than-normal feeling he gave her, which I didn’t think was a coincidence.

Tex avoided us by entering his tent when he saw us, something I wasn’t surprised about. Being “new,” he’d be edgy about outsiders, so he did it to keep his cover just in case someone was watching.

One thing of concern was that I noted the General wasn’t among them.

We were back at Homer’s tent when he said, “Seems like we wasted your time.”

They didn’t.

Though, it was close to time for Harlow to meet up with Brady, so it wasn’t worth it for Luna to take her slot, which was a bummer.

“We have a semi-kinda lead we’ll be looking into,” I told him. “Maybe it’ll pan out. It wasn’t a bust.”

He dipped his chin at me, at the chicks, and he was about to duck into his tent when I asked, “Where’s the General?”

Homer gave me a sad look and said, “He goes out on what he calls patrol at night. Usually gets lost, rattled, holes up somewhere, and in the morning, we gotta go find him. By now, he’s probably lost.”

God, I hoped Scott, Louise and the guys found help for the General, and soon.

Homer waited to see if I had anything else, making me wish, not for the first time, that I could find help for him too. He was such a good guy.

Maybe I could talk to Scott and Louise about it.

Since we didn’t have anything else at that moment, I smiled at him and said, “Thanks for helping.”

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